Have you ever had the desire to try freelancing? I certainly did. The variety of the work and companies with the opportunity to continually learn, develop, gain new perspectives and apply those new skills were all very appealing aspects.
In a recent Hanson & Hunt Talking Points podcast, they talked about “job hopping” and the average length of time an employee spends at each employer. Arik shared a number of moves he made in the early part of his career that helped him hone in on the particular area of communications to focus his career.
It made me think about my own career path, having worked for several companies in 29 years. While some may call this job hopping, I believe these transitions taught me resilience, helped me grow, learn about myself and the work I wanted to do, and overall, has made me a more well-rounded, valuable employee. I think it also fulfilled that need for variety and continual learning.
Being an extrovert, one of the things that always held me back from truly freelancing was the thought of being alone and not being able to build relationships with your team or share best practices and ideas with your co-workers. And, quite frankly, I was not interested in managing a business.
According to an Oct. 9, 2019 story in Fast Company, 35% of the U.S. workforce is now freelancing—10 million more than 5 years ago. What used to be a transitional option for those who were between jobs, has become a choice for many workers.
Working for Pivot has given me the best of both worlds. I support clients with communications needs, while having a team of fun, smart and highly talented change and communications experts.
We normally have “team day” once a week where the entire team works together in our office. While this isn’t occurring with today’s COVID-19 environment, we continue to connect virtually. This provides the opportunity to share updates on projects, get help and ideas where needed, engage in development opportunities, align on company goals and priorities, brainstorm and solicit graphic design help.
We like to call this novel concept, “teamlancing.” It’s a unique blend of consulting, freelancing and agency that is borne from a need to work in a more agile world. Today, we hear a lot about the gig economy or activity-based work. Working for Pivot allows us to truly balance work and life, learn from and bond with our co-workers and further develop our knowledge and skills, all while supporting the client’s needs.
Having worked in the corporate communications space for years, our team is able to quickly become an extension of our client’s team. Knowing there’s a team like Pivot ready to support you, can take the stress off of today’s lean communications teams while helping to fulfill the needs of the business.
At a time as hectic as this one, I’m grateful for the teamlancing approach that Pivot takes, and I’m glad to have learned how to handle remote work well before it became a shocking necessity.
